Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and headsmen--and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities and crimes have accomplished little for the preservation of property or life. It is safe to say that governments have committed far more crimes than they have prevented. Why is it that men will suffer and risk so much for the sake of stealing? Why will they accept degradation and punishment and infamy as their portion? Some will answer this question by an appeal to the dogma of original sin; others by saying that millions of men and women are under the control of fiends--that they are actually possessed by devils; and others will declare that all these people act from choice--that they are possessed of free wills, of intelligence--that they know and appreciate consequences, and that, in spite of all, they deliberately prefer a life of crime. II. Have we not advanced far enough intellectually to deny the existence of chance? Are we not satisfied now that back of every act and thought and dream and fancy is an efficient cause? Is anything, or can anything, be produced that is not necessarily produced? Can the fatherless and motherless exist? Is there not a connection between all events, and is not every act related to all other acts? Is it not possible, is it not probable, is it not true, that the actions of all men are determined by countless causes over which they have no positive control? Certain it is that men do not prefer unhappiness to joy. It can hardly be said that man intends permanently to injure himself, and that he does what he does in order that he may live a life of misery. On the other hand, we must take it for granted that man endeavors to better his own condition, and seeks, although by mistaken ways, his own well-being. The poorest man would like to be rich--the sick desire health--and no sane man wishes to win the contempt and hatred of his fellow-men. Every human being prefers liberty to imprisonment. Are the brains of criminals exactly like the brains of honest men? Have criminals the same ambitions, the same standards of happiness or of well-being? If a difference exists in brain, will that in part account for the difference in character? Is there anything in heredity? Are vices as carefully transmitted by nature as virtues? Does each man in some degree bear burdens imposed by ancestors? We know that diseases of flesh and blood are transmitted--that the child is the heir of physical deformity. Are diseases of the brain--are deformities of the soul, of the mind, also transmitted?